It's true. People who grow food are starving.

Many of the farmers that grow the cheap food we throw in the bin every day can no longer feed themselves.

If the world already produces enough food to feed 12 billion people, why do we keep hearing about food security and not food waste?

In my last blog I proposed that to better-understand and find opportunity in the globalised food system, food waste was the elephant in the room.

Does this mean that the issue of food security does not exist?

Unfortunately, food security is a very real issue in many parts of the world.  Shamefully, food security is now an issue in the many regions that were once happily feeding themselves.

 

But if we are overproducing food how is it so?

For centuries subsistence farming has held-together rural communities in many third-world countries.  As the commoditisation of food has diminished the quality and availability of existing arable land, vast areas of native vegetation have been cleared to provide new land to grow crops.  To achieve this, those in control of the global food system have broken-down the subsistence farming model with the lure that poor rural communities can become rich.

Many of the crops grown are for export.  These are crops that can’t be eaten until they are processed or refined somewhere else e.g. coffee.  Basically a cheap way of growing food for someone else that can pay a higher price for it.

In many rural communities mono-crop farming has gone horribly wrong.  The local people no longer have neither their own food supply nor can they afford to buy food, because the cost of modern farming has sent them broke.  And to top it all off, they can’t return to their traditional ways because the ecology of their native land has been destroyed.  They are trapped in a vicious cycle of clearing more land.

Clearly, the issues of food security and food waste are unsustainable in today’s global food system.

Why am I picking on this?  It’s not why you think.

Consumer tipping point

If you are involved in agribusiness and food, then the topics of food security and food waste are a lesson in what it means to be consumer-centric.

Why is this important?

There is a HUGE groundswell movement by consumers who are demanding to understand the global food system.  We are on the verge of a tipping point whereby consumers will have a better understanding of the global food industry, than many of the operators in it.

This is significant because consumers will be making purchasing decisions based on their understanding.  So when they buy their food they will be seeking-out messages that demonstrate you understand to.

Do you truly understand what it is going on in your industry?  You need to understand the food system so that you know how to look for and identify the next market opportunity.

If you don’t understand what is happening in the food industry, you will not give-off the right messages and your products will not sell.

The non-price characteristics of food and food experience are the fastest growing phenomenon in food.  It provides small to medium operators an incredible niche opportunity to different themselves by projecting the right messages in the areas of:

•          Sustainability
•          Ecologically sound
•          Land clearing
•          Water usage
•          Food waste
•          Organic
•          Non GM
•          And so on.

There is more than enough room in all this to really build-up the intrinsic value of your products in the minds of consumers.

The higher the intrinsic value, the more money you make.